Where we rest is a matter of what and how we love. Our restlessness is a reflection of what we try to “enjoy” as an end in itself—what we look to as a place to land. The heart’s hunger is infinite, which is why it will ultimately be disappointed with anything merely finite. Humans are those strange creatures who can never be fully satisfied by anyt

“We are not referring to some dark corner, but to a vast inner space.”6 According to St. Augustine, this vast inner space of the soul, an “abyss” as he terms it, is completely open and porous to God: “Indeed, Lord, to your eyes, the abyss of human consciousness is naked.”

Wilber writes that our deepest inner yearnings are to reconnect with divine consciousness, and if we do not have access to genuine transcendent states, we will have an automatic tendency to fill the void with material and social substitutes. He calls this drive for wholeness the Atman project.8